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Spaghetti Married to a Waffle? Differences Between Men & Women's Behavior That Will Affect Your Marriage

Spaghetti Married to a Waffle? Differences Between Men & Women’s Behavior That Will Affect Your Marriage

Differences Between Men and Women

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Guys are Waffles. Girls are Spaghetti. His Needs, Her Needs.

All books about the differences between men and women. You don’t have to have a PhD to know men and women are made remarkably different; physically, emotionally, neurologically. So I have an idea – let’s put one of each to live life together forever LOL! God does amazing things within a marriage but the most amazing to me is simply the fact that He can take two imperfect people who can be so different and melt them together into one flesh forever. I can’t comprehend. How does He do it?! Men and women are SO different!

If you’ve been married for any length of time, you know this all too well. When the Mr. is to credit for your migraine 😉 it might help to remind yourself that he is a totally different creature. So, what are some of those differences between men and women that can play into your marriage and make it difficult?

Spaghetti & Waffles?

Women dwell on things. In their book Men Are Like Waffles – Women Are Like Spaghetti, authors Bill and Pam Farrell explain that women’s brains are like spaghetti. We have a conflict with our man and it will intertwine with everything else we do that day. We want to talk it out and resolve the situation. Men compartmentalize and mostly shut down. They’re not emotionally driven beings, but more logical thinkers. For example…

So the hubs and I have a disagreement on parenting. He goes quiet and retreats to his phone on our bed. I fume. I obsess. I go over and over it in my head evaluating – “Did I really understand what he said? Why would he say that? That’s not right. This is how it really is”
and on and on and on LOL! I can’t function. I can’t sleep. My body might be going through some motions but my mind is ALL about the “fight”. Side note – someone tell me I’m not the only wife that overdramatizes a simple disagreement into a fight LOL!! Anyway, my daily tasks and thought processes are spaghetti. They’re all mixed together!

He, on the other hand, is a waffle. His brain is compartmentalized. He can go to work after a disagreement or fight and not think about the situation at home and be completely focused on his work duties. His brain doesn’t mix thoughts like noodles but rather compartmentalizes the different aspects of life into separate waffle holes!

I have learned to let my Mr. have his space. Once he cools off he usually makes some sarcastic joke about how I don’t love him anymore or makes a ridiculous face that resembles Carl from Slingblade. Then I know he wants to make up. Making up is usually me coming to my senses or he admitting he lashed out in frustration or tiredness.

Word Quotas

Did you know women have verbal centers on both sides of the brain while men have only one? Your whole world makes sense now, huh? Don’t tell your husband that you have a better brain than him though!

Dennis Rainey with FamilyLife Today once said that women use a daily word bank of 50,000-70,000 words per day while men only speak 30-50K. While there are studies that both agree and disagree with this theory, it helps me. This is why.

I don’t like to feel like I’m being ignored or given the silent or brushed off. Most of the time though, he’s not trying to convey that. He just doesn’t talk as much as I do! I can remind myself of that difference between us and I’m not offended by how short he is. 🙂

It also helps when texting, because (again, I hope I’m not the only one) I tend to assume emotions based on text. A short text will make me think that he’s upset or struggling with something. I’m wrong about 90% of the time! So I’ll remind myself that he just doesn’t use as many words as me.

Lastly, one of the areas I struggle with this difference the most is coming home from work. Here’s what I mean. We both come home and ask how each other’s day was. My answer is almost always double the length that his is! I feel like I’m rambling on and on. Then when it’s his turn to talk the conversation comes to a close pretty quickly. This isn’t because he doesn’t want to talk to me! It’s because he’s spent quite a bit of his “word bank” during his work day with coworkers and patients and wants to come home to quiet relaxation. Of course we still talk about our day, but I’ve learned to be just as happy chilling “wordlessly” together too.

I Use My Pink Megaphone

Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, author of Love and Respect, says men and women wear sunglasses or hearing aids in either pink or blue. What he means by this is that both women and men’s hearing, seeing, speaking are affected by their gender. That’s why we feel like men understand men better and women understand each other better.

An action or word can be perceived entirely different to a man than to a woman. I might say something to my Mr. and he feel disrespected and insulted when I didn’t mean it like that or even fathom it could come across like that. Even a lack of words can go into his blue hearing aids differently than they “came” out of my pink megaphone (another of Dr. Eggerich’s metaphors). Sometimes he’ll say something and in my brain it doesn’t even require a response. It’s simply a statement. He takes my lack of response as disrespectful and it irritates him.

He can say something that comes across as very unloving and cold when that’s not where his heart was at all. If I try to hug him while he’s hot and sweaty (physical touch is my love language) he kind of shrugs his shoulders away and tells me he’s hot. I feel hurt by the unloving rejection but he’s not trying to be unloving. He’s just hot and sweaty!

READ MORE ABOUT LOVE LANGUAGES

I’m grateful I learned this lesson. It’s made it much easier to realize that sometimes there’s just a misunderstanding that stems from the differences between us.

Spaghetti Married to a Waffle? Differences Between Men & Women's Behavior That Will Affect Your Marriage

Differences

And that’s a fact. Men and women are different. We need to recognize these differences. God made us different. And guess what? That’s ok! Some of those differences are what attract us to our spouses in the first place. Put us together and now our differences make us a stronger team. We just have to remember not to switch sides where we’re against each other.

The differences between men and women will affect our marriage! When we can accept and respect our spouses differences as the opposite sex, it shifts our perspective, gives us insight, and we’re able to better handle them. Never forget your husband’s general good will and remember that sometimes a conflict is just because of those differences between men and women.

Love & Strength Friend!

Lauren of Truly Devoted to him sign off and circular photo

To get to know me better, read about me & my saved love


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